CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. >> NASA is offering up wreckage from the Challenger and Columbia for public view after hiding it from the world for decades. A new exhibit at Kennedy Space Center features two pieces of debris, one from each lost shutt...

LOS ANGELES >> The stakes may be high for Ethan Hunt and his team in “Mission: Impossible — Rogue Nation,” but it was hardly impossible for the Tom Cruise pic to conquer the box office. The fifth installment in the nea...

MOST RECENT STORIES

War and unrest

DUMA, West Bank — Suspected Jewish assailants set fire to a West Bank home on Friday and burned a sleeping Palestinian toddler to death in an attack that drew Palestinian rage and widespread Israeli condemnation. The attack, which threatens to set off another violent escalation, shines a light on the growing lawlessness of extremist Jewish settlers that Israel is either unable or unwilling to contain. The extremists have for years staged attacks against Palestinian property, as...

By MOHAMMED DARAGHMEH and TIA GOLDENBERG
Associated Press
|2 days ago

Hunting

The news broke early Tuesday. Cecil, a 13-year-old black-maned lion of Zimbabwe had been killed by a Minnesota dentist with a bow and arrow. The story made international news. Trophy hunter Walter Hunter paid $55,000 to kill a lion in the wild. Cecil lived on a preserve and according to accounts, was lured away and killed. Viewing on mobile? Read “Killing of beloved lion stirs global...

Nation and World

While the world has been focused on Greece’s economic woes, the United States has been experiencing a serious debt crisis in its own backyard — in the US territory of Puerto Rico. The tiny Caribbean island owes $72 billion in debt, held mostly in US municipal bonds. Puerto Rico’s governor, Alejandro García Padilla, has called Puerto Rico’s financial situation a “death...

By Emilie Munson
GlobalPost
|3 days ago

Plane crashes

WASHINGTON >> Air safety investigators have a “high degree of confidence” that a photo of aircraft debris found in the Indian Ocean is of a wing component unique to the Boeing 777, the same model as the Malaysia Airlines plane that disappeared last year, according to a U.S. official said Wednesday. Air safety investigators — one of them a Boeing investigator — have identified the component as a “flaperon” from the trailing edge of a 777...

By Joan Lowy and Lori Hinnant
The Associated Press
|3 days ago

Territorial disputes

JERUSALEM — Israeli bulldozers began demolishing a contested housing complex in a West Bank settlement on Wednesday as the prime minister’s office announced the “immediate construction” of some 300 new units at another location in the same settlement and advanced plans for about 500 new units in east Jerusalem. The move, which is likely to draw international rebuke, comes amid a standoff in the Beit El settlement, to the north of Jerusalem in the West...

By DANIEL ESTRIN
Associated Press
|4 days ago

Wildlife

DELAWARE, Ohio — An Ohio man who jumped a fence to pet cougars at the Columbus zoo and posted video of it on YouTube says he jokingly said “Here, kitty” and decided to move closer when the animals seemed to respond. • VIDEO: Petting zoo cougars Thirty-five-year-old Joshua Newell of suburban Gahanna is set for arraignment Wednesday on a misdemeanor criminal trespassing charge. The video posted last week...

Associated Press
|4 days ago

Missing persons

CHARLESTON, W.Va. >> A man killed by an escort he met online is being investigated for possible links to the unsolved disappearances or slayings of women nationwide, authorities said. Neal Falls, of Springfield, Oregon, was carrying axes, a shovel and bleach when he was killed July 18, and authorities said Monday he had been stopped, interviewed or investigated by police in at least 20 states. Police say Falls was fatally shot as he attacked and choked the escort in...

By Jonathan Mattise and Dan Sewell
The Associated Press
|5 days ago

Politics

SAN FRANCISCO >> Ivory dealers in San Francisco’s Chinatown stood in their shop doors next to windows full of carved ivory tusks and trinkets, unfazed by proposed federal rules that the White House says go as far as possible to ban the U.S. trade of ivory from the world’s endangered elephants. “Wooly mammoth ivory,” not elephant ivory, Michael Rasoyli said this week of the carved tusks for sale in the store he manages. “Cow bone,”...

By Ellen Knickmeyer
The Associated Press
|5 days ago

Scientific controversies

LONDON — Scientists and tech experts — including Prof. Stephen Hawking and Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak — warned Tuesday of a global arms race with weapons using artificial intelligence. In an open letter with hundreds of signatories, the experts argued that if any major military power pushes ahead with development of autonomous weapons, “a global arms race is virtually inevitable, and the endpoint of this technological trajectory is obvious: autonomous...

By DANICA KIRKA
Associated Press
|5 days ago

Theft

MAHWAH, N.J. — Police say a man drove off with a bag containing $150,000 in cash after two employees who were replenishing ATMs mistakenly left it on a lawn in northern New Jersey. Mahwah police say in a news release that the ATM employees had stopped at a business on Industrial Avenue when one of them placed the satchel on the front lawn as he moved items around in their vehicle. They drove off, forgetting the bag. Sometime after 11:15 a.m. Monday, surveillance...